Page:In Flanders Fields and Other Poems.djvu/109

Going to the Wars bodies dead upon the field along with friends of a lifetime, comrades of a campaign. This is no mere matter of surmise. The last day I spent with him we talked of those things in his tent, and I testify that it is true.

IV.

John McCrae went to the war without illusions. At first, like many others of his age, he did not "think of enlisting", although "his services are at the disposal of the Country if it needs them."

In July, 1914, he was at work upon the second edition of the Text-Book of Pathology by Adami and McCrae, published by Messrs. Lea and Febiger, and he had gone to Philadelphia to read the proofs. He took them to Atlantic City where he could "sit out on the sand, and get sunshine and oxygen, and work all at once."

It was a laborious task, passing eighty to a hundred pages of highly technical print each day. Then there was the index, between six and seven thousand items. "I have," so he writes, "to change every item in the old index and add others. I have a pile of pages, 826 in all. I look at the index, find the old page among the 826, and then change the number. This about 7000 times, so you may guess the [87]